Nearly five months after Kansas City firefighter John Mesh died in the line of duty, some of his colleagues are speaking out for the first time.

Mesh and fellow firefighter Larry Leggio were at the scene of a fire on Independence Avenue on Oct. 12 when the building gave way. The two men were struck by debris and died of their injuries.

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Mesh’s colleagues said he meant so much to them and it’s been tough going on without him. They said he was more than just a friend – he was family.

“It’s a lot harder now,” said co-worker John Badami. “I don’t even want to go to the station.”

Firefighters said Mesh was the glue that held the station together. They said going to work without him has been painful.

“In the mornings, I just sit out in my truck sometimes and just tell myself, ‘Hey, he wants you to go in there. He still wants you to go push on and do what you’ve got to do for the fire department for other people out there’ because that was his life,” Badami said.

Mesh’s commitment to the Kansas City Fire Department never wavered, co-workers said.

“He was one of the best firemen I ever worked with,” said friend and co-worker John Bartshe. “(He was) very calm, very level-headed, very cool under fire.”

Colleagues said they always knew where he would be and what he would be doing while fighting a fire.

“He can’t be replaced,” said colleague John Sirna.

One quality his friends remember is his sense of humor. They said he used it to relieve stress and keep spirits high.

“He was a big movie-quoting guy, a big movie buff,” said Badami. “He could probably speak a whole day’s dialogue in movie quotes.”

He said that after 2 a.m. calls, he and Mesh would sometimes play jokes on each other, like hiding in each other’s bunk.

“He would crawl in there, not knowing I was in there,” said Badami. “You know, things like that, we would do to each other all the time, just to keep the morale up.”

The firefighters in this unit spent every third day together on 24-hour shifts for the last five years. They were groomsmen at each other’s wedding and godfathers for each other’s children.

“You depend on each other for your lives,” said Sirna.

Friends said Mesh was the most private person they ever met and never joined a social network. They recall he hated photos, preferring to stay behind the camera. They said now that he’s gone, they want to preserve his legacy.

“We don’t ever want his memory forgotten and what he stood for,” Sirna said. “It’s very important that we keep that alive.”

Friends and family of John Mesh are setting up a scholarship in his name.

If you’d like to contribute to help honor his memory, checks for the John V. Mesh Memorial Scholarship can be mailed to 6131 North Elmwood Ave. Kansas City, Missouri, 64119.